Wednesday, October 24, 2012

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Holiday 2012: Personalized Tree Ornaments Are a Family Tradition

Since my husband and I spent our first Christmas together, years before we were married, I purchased two personalized ornaments for our tree . . . one for me and him and one for our Beagle named Buddy. Our family has changed and grown quite a bit since then. The wonderful thing is that I have the ornaments to tell our family's story for the past 17 years.

This is the third year that I have had the pleasure of showing off an ornament of my choice from Ornaments With Love. You can see my choices for the last two years here and here. In addition to the ornament I chose to showcase, I always order additional ornaments, such as an ornament for each of our 3 children, a couples ornament for my husband and myself, an ornament for the whole family, and sometimes an ornament for our pets. A few years ago, I extended our tradition to include an ornament for my sister and brother-in-law when they bought their first home.

This year, I chose this Personalized Heart Christmas Ornament that holds up to 16 names. This particular ornament had the option of putting red hearts in the blank spaces. Since I only needed 8 spaces for names, I was able to have them alternate with 8 red hearts. I love how this ornament turned out!

As you can see, the personalization is very carefully done. Below are the ornaments for my sister and brother-in-law, plus the one I chose for my husband and myself.

Every year I do one of three things . . . allow my children to select their own ornaments, ask my children to specify a theme, or surprise them with ornaments I pick out for them. This year, I asked for each to give me their first and second choices for a theme. I was not able to find any of their first choices, which were a superhero, a ninja, and a duck. Maybe Ornaments With Love will be able to add these for next year? I was able to find all their second choices, which were the martial arts black belt, a skateboarder, and a fairy.

If you are buying ornaments for a gift, you will be happy to know that each ornament comes wrapped in bubble wrap and tissue paper and each is accompanied by a printed Christmas-themed cello bag with a twist tie and a gift tag attached to the front of the bag.

I want to also mention that, for all the years I have been buying personalized ornaments from this website, I have never experienced an error in personalization or had an ornament arrive damaged. Ornaments With Love also offers Free Shipping within the U.S. for orders over $50. They also offer flat rate shipping fees for U.S. and for Canadian addresses, plus they ship internationally as well.

Thank you to Ornaments With Love for providing a complimentary product sample for us to base this review upon.